Chapter 6: What Denise Knew
Aunt Denise arrived on Saturday morning.
She rang the doorbell instead of using her key, which she had not done in three years.
I watched from the upstairs landing as my father let her in.
Vanessa appeared from the kitchen, wiping her hands on a towel, and the three of them went into the living room and closed the door.
Caleb appeared at my shoulder.
"What's happening?"
"I don't know yet."
We sat at the top of the stairs and listened to the low murmur of voices below.
We couldn't make out words.
Only tones.
Vanessa's voice went up twice.
My father's stayed level.
Denise's was the one I couldn't read.
After forty minutes, the living room door opened.
Denise came out first.
She looked up and saw me on the landing.
She stopped.
"Nia.
Can we talk?
Just the two of us."
I came downstairs.
We went to the back porch.
She sat in the wicker chair and I sat across from her and she looked at me for a long moment before she spoke.
"How long has it been this bad?"
"Since March," I said.
"Maybe before."
She pressed her lips together.
"She called me in October.
After the money went missing.
She told me you had been stealing from her, that you were acting out because of grief, that she was trying to be patient but she needed someone to help her manage you."
"Manage me."
"Those were her words." Denise looked at her hands.
"I believed her.
I shouldn't have.
But she was convincing, and I thought — I thought maybe she was right that you were struggling."
"I was struggling," I said.
"Because of her."
"I know that now." She looked up.
"Your father showed me Caleb's list this morning."
I waited.
"Nia, I owe you an apology.
A real one.
I let someone use your mother's memory as a reason to doubt you, and I should have come to you directly instead."
The mention of my mother landed somewhere deep.
"What do you mean, my mother's memory?"
Denise's expression changed.
"Vanessa told me your mother had problems.
That you inherited her instability.
That the stealing and the lying were part of a pattern she was trying to get ahead of before it got worse."
My mother had been the most steady person I had ever known.
She had worked two jobs and made my lunches and never once raised her voice at me in sixteen years.
She had died of a sudden illness when I was thirteen, and I had not had a single day since then that did not carry the weight of that.
"She said that about my mother."
"Yes."
I stood up from the chair.
Not because I was going to leave.
Just because I could not sit still with what I was feeling.
"Nia—"
"She used my mother to make you think I was broken."
Denise stood too.
"Yes.
And I am sorry I let her."
I turned toward the yard.
The grass was still wet from the previous night.
A bird moved through the branches of the oak tree at the back fence, and I watched it until my breathing slowed.
"What are you going to do?" I asked.
"I'm going to tell your father everything she said to me.
In detail.
And I'm going to write it down if he needs me to."
I turned back to face her.
"She's going to say you're lying.
Or that you misunderstood."
"She can say whatever she wants." Denise's voice was quiet but very firm.
"Your mother was my sister.
Nobody gets to use her name to hurt her daughter.
Not while I'm standing."
Inside the house, I could hear Vanessa's voice rising again.
May you like
My father's stayed level.
The bird left the tree.
